Author Topic: CPR for GTF Valkyrie  (Read 10131 times)

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Offline Herra Tohtori

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CPR for GTF Valkyrie
<EDIT>

Newest versions for glowpointed, enhanced textures for GTF Valkyrie and GTF Angel. Enjoy.

GTF Valkyrie high resolution textures
GTF Valkyrie medium resolution textures

GTF Angel high resolution textures
GTF Angel medium resolution textures

If you don't like the glowmaps, don't use them or edid them to your hearts' content. :p

</EDIT>


I don't know if HTL Valkyrie has ever been made, but I was fed up with the low-quality textures of the retail Valkyrie fighter... so I decided to do something about it. And... this is my first fast attempt to re-texture a Freespace ship (i've done some lousy skins for IL-2 SturmovikFB, but this is a little different...), so don't LOL yourselves to death.


I cannot model, so the only way to make the poor Valkyrie look better was new textures. Unfortunately, I can't be bothered to really make textures either. So, I had to modify the existing texture to somehow look sharper and better.

Well, of course I was not going to spend days trying to desperately draw the picture better on GIMP. So I committed an immensely brutal solution...

I printed the original texture, drew it better analogically (ie. with a pencil), scanned it, resized it, played a little with contrast and brightness and this was the result...

Retail textures:



"Medium" resolution textures (1422k tga @ 512x950)




"Too High" resolution textures (5678k tga @ 1024x1900)





I know, the texture is big as hell... too big for a fighter probably, memory-wise, but what the hell. If someone wants to use it, I'll provide a linky to textures.

I also know that it could be hella lot better if someone who really could texture would re-make it. But as I said, this is primarily CPR for good ol' Valkyrie, until someone decides to HTL it.

Considering the time used for this texture (~2h) and remembering that the main image editing tool was a pencil, the quality of the work is actually surprisingly good IMO...  ;)

Oh, and if someone has already made better textures for Valkyrie (which I doubt, otherwise they'd be in the Port already, eh?), could you point me there please? Valkyrie is a nice craft to fly, but the retail one is what it is.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2006, 01:12:50 pm by Herra Tohtori »
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Offline ARSPR

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
As you say they are better than original so good work. Just two things:

+ Why don't you use power of two sizes (512 x 1024)?

+ Have you tried to convert them to dds (DXT1c) to lower their size?

Please post them (any improvemt IS good news).
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
1. I haven't tried any other shape than that on which the original primary texture was, because how the hell should I know how to actually texture the model? If I tried to put the parts onto different places, it would end up as a complete mess, as the cockpit would be in the thruster and wing in the windshield. So, I didn't want to change the aspect ratio of the texture, as I'm quite sure it would have had unwished effects.  :p

I merely extracted the original texture, printed it on the same shape but bigger, sharpened/smoothened the pixelated edges with a pencil (lol@that), scanned the thing and after small modifications I tossed it onto fsport/data/maps dir and it worked all right.

Oh, then I managed to make a customized shinemap also, but it's also ruddy big.

2. No, I haven't tried to convert it onto any other format than tga and that's because I know that works. Besides, I don't think GIMP can save dds's without some kind of plugin, which I don't think I have.


On the positive note, it actually looks bloody good in-game, even if I say so myself.  :D

These are the mammoth-high-resolution texture and equally big shinemap together, though - I don't think they're very good for framerates if there are more than two or three Valkyries in the mission, as three of them already would eat 30 MB of RAM...

Anyway, here's a few screens from "Paving the Way", courtesy of FSPort 3.0.3:






Here are the files:

fighter05-01a.tga - highest resolution texture.

fighter05-01a-shine.tga - equal resolution shinemap, not mandatory; the default shinemap works quite good too.

medium_fighter05-01a.tga - medium resolution version.

Have fun, see what you can make of these.

EDIT:

Quote
*** WWW quota (60.00 MB) soft limit reached ***
  Decrease your WWW usage before Thu Jan  1 03:00:00 1970

Oh well... I had to put the files into a RAR archive.

Find the files HERE.
« Last Edit: June 30, 2006, 08:35:05 pm by Herra Tohtori »
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Offline Mars

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
2. No, I haven't tried to convert it onto any other format than tga and that's because I know that works. Besides, I don't think GIMP can save dds's without some kind of plugin, which I don't think I have.

GIMP DDS Plugin

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
Thanks - but as long as this texture is not in powers of two, dds compression doesn't work... The generated dds image was about 2,5 MB bigger than the tga file.

And if I change the aspect ratio so that it's for example, 1024x2048, the mapping gets fubared here and there. So, in this case the dds has no use (yet).
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline ARSPR

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
I've made the conversion with nvdxt.exe from (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_utilities.html). The version I downloaded the other day is 8.22

This version allows you to use non power of 2 files and it has the new -quality_highest option BUT I DON'T KNOW WHY I always get a full white alpha channel (and I'm using -dxt1c not -dxt1a, and the TGA doesn't have alpha).

I'm geting mad about this issue because Photoshop plugin does the same thing.  :mad:

Can anyone try it or post which version he is using?
IF YOU HAVE TROUBLES WITH FS2:
  • Please, please, please, READ and UNDERSTAND the sticky threads in FreeSpace & FreeSpace Open Support board.
    A lot of people are willing to help you, but, as anyone can understand, seeing the very same "issues" repeated again and again can become quite depressing. Please, spend a bit of time trying to solve the issue by yourself.
    (Lobo deserves a monument).
  • Then, if you aren't still able to solve your issue, feel free to ask for help in that same board.
    FYI, most of the troubles are caused by wrong mod installations which lead to either missing data or undesired cross-effects between them. Always follow the mod installation instructions and keep a clean FS2 installation as explained in the sticky threads. Two additional links about how the game handles game data:
  • If you think that you've discovered a bug, mantis it.
    Provide as much info as you can, and try to narrow it down. A lonely "FS2 doesn't work" is not a good report.

Whoever Hanlon was: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Albert Einstein: Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.

Dell Dimension 9200 - Vista 32-bit Ultimate
Core 2 Quad Q6600 @2.4GHz - RAM 2 GB DDR2
nvidia 8800 GTX - Integrated Sigmatel Audio

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
Yay!

I fixed a few things - mainly, removed the "retail reflection" light thingamaroos from the cockpit glass, AND I did indeed find a way to make the files dds.

I also used this time despeckle rather than gaussian to blend the scanning noise out of the texture... I think it works better like this, somehow the smaller details (like the arrows and triangulars) are clearer now. Further more, the shinemaps are als oin DDS format and they are better now (ie. they don't reflect as much as before).

That GIMP plugin seems to be working quite good now that I figured out that I can indeed stretch the texture a bit to make them have 1:2 aspect ratio and thus being able to be on powers of two resolution.

Here's the new RAR package containing high-res and medium-res DDS files. And the difference between the high-res and med-res is actually more subtle than on the former ones.


GTF_Valkyrie_DDS.rar EDIT: Link outdated, grab the newest textures from the beginning of the opening message.


I personally think the Valkyrie looks much better now... but it still needs to be HTLed by someone who can actually model the thing.  ;)


Oh, and whoever gets the LeLv24 reference, gets a cookie. :p
« Last Edit: July 02, 2006, 12:32:11 pm by Herra Tohtori »
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
Screenshots!

These two are medium resolution (512x1024) textures...






...And these two are high resolution (1024x2048) textures on action.





As you can see, the difference is not very big. But you can decide which version to use. I'm sure almost all here know how to - put the maps of choise to fsport/data/maps directory and cut the high_ or medium_ away from the filename.
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Offline Cobra

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
hmm... make both versions a bit sharper. :) other than that it looks great. keep it up!

now, if someone can hi-polify the valkyrie it would look awesome!
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Offline neoterran

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
awesome ! fantastic job, thanks very much. Now if only the angel could get the same treatment...
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Offline ShivanSpS

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
The Angel really need it...

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
hmm... make both versions a bit sharper. :) other than that it looks great. keep it up!


Well, that's the real trick, isn't it?  :D

I made a "raw" version, but that shows the paper's texture, or in other words the result looks quite "noisy"... It is a tad bit sharper, but flat surfaces are then quite granulated. Particularly the upper surface of the wings happened to become very granulated. A shame that when I apply any blur filter, it does smoothen the "noise" away, but it also inevitably blurs up the lines and other detail.

The Despeckle filter feels the best right now... Actually, if I could apply some kind of cell shading to the original, it might offer the best possible result. But, it's nevertheless *better* than the original, eh?

I'll post the "raw" or sharper, if you wish, version later tomorrow.


Oh, and about Angel... If you point me to the maps, I'll see what I can do. You know, I've never actually seen the whole ship. ::)

EDIT: Referring to the last sentence, that's because I never looked for it. My god, the textures are hideous...  :ick:
« Last Edit: July 01, 2006, 09:39:52 pm by Herra Tohtori »
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

  

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie (and GTF Angel also)
Heh.

Guess what I just noticed?

I noticed that there are quite a few similarities with

and


The first is the retail Angel texture, the latter is retail Valkyrie texture. It's exactly the same texture, but the Angel texture is squeezed into 256x256 whereas Valkyrie texture is 256x475. The Angel model just doesn't use the places where the VAlkyrie additional engines are.

Valkyrie texture works almost directly on Angel also. There is only one change that needed to be taken care of. The Angel has slightly longer nose cone than the Valkyrie, and just renaming the Valkyrie textures worked perfectly everywhere else but the nose, which got ugly stripes. So I created new files, brushed some dark colour on the nose and some hull reflection colour on the shinemap onto corresponding places, and it worked just fine.  ;)

This is the GTF Angel with her new skin. I'll post those maps later today, but here's a glimpse of the ship:



...yes, I've also glowpointed the ship. I tried to keep it civil with the lights, we don't want to fly GTF Chrismas Trees now do we? Anyway, this is how the glowpointed version looks like at the moment. Say what you think, I'll edit too many lights away if you think it's necessary. Again, the exact same glowmap can be used with both ships.




Oh, btw - I noticed something strange about the Ship lab (F3) today. I don't know how and why, but it doesn't matter how much I rotate the ship with mouse, the screenshot that is generated onto screenshots directory always shows me a ship that steadily rotates around the one and same vertical (yaw) axis on the screen.

However, the picture which is pasted onto clipboard DOES have the rotated ship. Strange, eh?  :confused:
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Offline Mars

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
I noticed that when I was trying to take screenshots for the Wiki (Wanderer ended up doing the bulk of the work

To take those screenshots more effectively, use the script found here on the wiki, you need to paste it somwhere (it doesn't create a screenshot automatically) but it doesn't have that yaw problem

Maybe I should have reported that

Mantised now. So nice being able to get on Mantis, couldn't for a while.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2006, 11:29:08 pm by Mars »

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
Hooray!

Glowpointed Valkyrie and Angel maps are downloadable. Find them from the edited first message.

 :)


Stay tuned - next objective is to update the fighter05-01b -map. That's the horrible retail map for HUD target display model. The sides already work very well, but there's a slight problem with the top of the model... I'll see what I can do about it. ;)
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Offline Mars

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
The link for the Angle doesn't work for me.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
Typo fixed.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Nico

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie (and GTF Angel also)
The first is the retail Angel texture

Retail? I'm the one who did the angel, it was a quick touch-up job of the valkyrie I did for... her... either that looooong gone descent project of mine, or as a request from someone, but don't remember who (either way it ended up in two projects back then, iirc). Basically I just lenghtened the nose, removed the underside intakes, two engine exhausts (iirc) and winglets at the tips of the wings, and moved the guns on the wings. I just resized the map to square to save some space :p

Sorry for bumping that old thread but I couldn't have Volition blamed for my lazy work here :p
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
So now I know where the Angel originally came from!  :p

The thing is, I haven't been around for long enough to know this old things, and actually this occasion was the first time ever I actually looked for the Angel in the VP files, so I didn't know whether it was an easter egg in the original game(s) or a mod made by someone (you). The reason why I chose the word "retail" is that I noticed that it was basically the retail Valkyrie texture with a slight aspect ratio change.

Now I'm glad I know it was you who made it. Thanks for info!
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: CPR for GTF Valkyrie
The Valk has never looked finer....... Any Angel shots, or would that constitute spoilage opf some kind?
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